At first glance, these may appear to be a blurry image of random lights, but in reality, what you see are co-orbiting supermassive black holes powering the giant radio source 3C 75. They’re surrounded by multi-million degree x-ray emitting gas, and blasting out jets of relativistic particles, separated by 25,000 light-years. Continue reading for a video and more information.
“Astronomers conclude that these two supermassive black holes are bound together by gravity in a binary system in part because the jets’ consistent swept back appearance is most likely due to their common motion as they speed through the hot cluster gas at 1200 kilometers per second. Such spectacular cosmic mergers are thought to be common in crowded galaxy cluster environments in the distant universe. In their final stages the mergers are expected to be intense sources of gravitational waves,” says NASA.
